


Puppy Love is for the Dogs

by bistourylove



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gaelic Language, Irish, M/M, Romance, bad things happen, because it's mormor and bad things always happen, some one gets sent off to war, teen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bistourylove/pseuds/bistourylove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I cry each night my tears for you<br/>My tears are all in vain<br/>I hope and I pray that maybe someday<br/>You'll be back, in my arms<br/>Once again<br/>~Donny Osmond, Puppy Love</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puppy Love is for the Dogs

"This wasn't meant to happen." He keeps telling himself that, every day Sebastian is away, although he says it to a photograph and makes sure no one else can hear him.  
How could he possibly tell anyone else? Not now, not here.

***

His father owns a bakery and they live in the cottage down the way. It's not a grand life, but they make their way. They scrape by and while there isn't love in his household at least there's always bread.

"Seamus, crack on! It's almost half five, you'll be late for the deliveries." Fiolan, his father, yells out, covered in flour from finger to elbow. He's pointing angrily at a stack of already wrapped loaves in the basket at the backend of Jim's bicycle.

"Tá brón orm." (I’m sorry) Jim says, stuffing an apple slice into his mouth, leaving most of the fruit behind for his twin brother, Risteard. He stands and tries to straighten his clothing - thin, worn muslin trousers, a hand-me-down shirt and waistcoat still to wide for his scrawny chest. He'll never actually look presentable.  
"Ristie, you've got to feed Maíre." He yells as he peddles past the window which opens to the room he shares with his twin. Their dog goes forgotten unless he sees to it, and so he sees that Richie does.

He makes it through his route, the same as it has been for years and then notices one last loaf sitting in his basket. The address is one he's never had to go to, that manor all the way up the hill. Don't they have their own bakers? He grumbles as he makes his ascent.

He should have used the servants entrance, but God knows where that is and it's probably a mile around the estate. He's a young man and doesn't care much for the pomp and circumstance of times long gone at any rate. He rattles the front door.

"Good morning." An over excited voice greets him when the door opens, instead of a footman it's a boy his age staring back at him and he's got a smile wider than his teeth.

"Uh, morning. I'm delivering bread, your parents must've ordered." Jim reaches to his basket, turning awkwardly behind him as he's still straddling the crossbar of his bike.

"Oh, brill!" The blond at the door still seems to have too much charm for so early in the morning. He reaches out for the bread and his fingers sweep over Jim's, it shouldn't be so nice for such a simple touch.  
"I'm Seb...er..." The boy rubs the back of his neck. "Sebastian Moran, whatever, my father is always going on about proper introductions. Sorry. What's your name?"  
"Jim Moriarty. Hi." He replies, a bit put off by Sebastian's openness.  
"Well, Jim, we're new here. Wanna show me around?" It's an innocent request, and if Ireland weren't the land of a thousand welcomes it might seem misplaced.  
"I actually have to get back to work." Jim's tone is a bit dower, some people don't just live in houses with gardens as big as the town square.  
"Oh, uhm, right, well I'll see you around I guess." Seb says as he's reaching in his pocket to pull out twenty quid. He hands it to Jim and expects him just to take it, when there's a hesitation he supplies "In case we didn't pay already."  
They both know the delivery wouldn't cost that, wouldn't cost that for the month but Jim takes it and crumples it into his pocket.  
His ride home is accompanied by his mind replaying the toffy English accent he met at the door. What a difference from the boggy lilt he's used to.

***  
A month passes and Spring softness relents to Summer heat. Despite the weather, Jim finds he doesn't mind making the trek up to the manor, not as long as a tall and sweet Sebastian is there to greet him.

***  
"You had better be back by sundown Seamus." His father is warning as he's walking out the door with an ill equipped rucksack for a day of walking.  
"Da, don't call me that. It's Jim." He pleads.  
"You get one English friend and all the sudden your name is James. I see."  
He leaves without saying another word.

***

"Took you long enough!" Sebastian says as he's galloping toward Jim before he pulls him into a firm embrace. A hug shouldn't feel so intimate, but if this is the only way Jim can feel the taller boy against him he'll take it gladly.  
"My father was going on."  
"Fathers." Seb says with a laugh. And they start out on their walk.  
Everything stays green in the summer sun, it's brighter even under the glow of radiant heat. So, it's easy to walk for an hour and a half with little conversation, easy to take it all in until they reach a gnarled tree with big shady branches.

"Here'll do."  
"Yeah, s'poose."  
They settle into the comfy roots of the tree and Jim pulls out a bacon butty, handing it off to Seb before retrieving his own.  
"I've got to be home by dark." Jim says with his mouth still half full, crumbs nestled in the corner of his lips.  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not if we just run off entirely hm?"  
"Yeah let's just go to New York and be beggars in Greenwhich Village."  
"Git."  
"Tosser."

Jim doesn't say but he would run off with Seb, he'd go anywhere if it meant he could have the blond lean on him like this and share every meal. He makes sure he doesn't say anything.  
Seb takes out a pack of rizla and a bag with a smile on his face.  
"Ugh, hate cigarettes, really? When did you start smoking all of a sudden."  
"Jimmy, your Da don't stuff his pipe with this." Seb waggles his eyebrows and a mischievous smile glints across his lips.  
Jim is quiet as Seb rolls a joint, he just watches Sebastian's tongue flick out to seal the paper, pink and wet. Maybe he looks for too long, maybe Seb already knows Jim steals sideways glances at him whenever he can.  
Seb lights it and inhales until his chest looks like it has expanded tenfold, he doesn't exhale, just hands the pot over to Jim with expectant eyes. Jim follows suit and nearly chokes to death, half way through a lung full of smoke comes billowing out of his mouth in a raucous cough. Seb finally breathes o ut, and it's elegant in comparison.  
"Try again, less."  
Jim does and he holds his breath for as long as he can before thick smoke floats out of his mouth and this time it feels like velvet.  
"Cor'blimey." Seb sighs as he sinks into the grass a bit.  
"Yeah, what you said."  
They lay silent for a minute, but it could be an hour, the way the leaves move above them is quiet amusement for them both.  
"I have to tell you something." Seb sounds too serious for the laziness the high has afforded them.  
"Yeah? What?" Jim's voice sounds like he's underwater to his own ears and he hopes he said it out loud.  
"D'ya know I love you?"  
"Ppppfff" Jim's lips flap the noise. "Yeah, course I do." His heart races and he can't blame it on the drug.  
Sebastian rolls onto his side so that his lips are a hairs breadth away from Jim's ear.  
"I mean I'm in love with you."  
Suddenly the easy floating of fade has disappeared and everything is in focus again. Jim turns his face and his lips meet Sebastian's sloppily, with all the coordination a first kiss should have. It's perfect and it's misaligned, teeth clacking when one of them is too eager. When Sebastian's hand moves from Jim's fluttering stomach to dip below the waistline of his trousers all he can think of is Avalon.

***  
Summer heat is replaced by humid breath, given and stolen. And then everything is stolen.

***  
"Shay, you got a girl like?" Risteard asks one night as they're laying in their respective uncomfortable beds.  
"Fuck, Richie, it's Jim. And no, I don't have a girl."  
"It's just you been gone all the time lately and well Da says you must be sleeping around."  
"I don't sleep around, I'm not a slut."  
"Well, then who's teeth left that bruise on your shoulder."  
"Shut up you, go to fucking sleep."

***  
Sebastian is late for their rendezvous. Jim just likes to call them that; it sounds nicer than a pretend meeting of lads for catch up over coffee which ends in him bent over in an alley or on his knees in the disableds.  
It's almost been a year, not that Jim's counting, which of course he is. And still, and yet, when his twin, the person he thought he was closest to in all the world, asks where it is he goes at night he doesn't say.  
Sebastian is late, so Jim orders another dry cappuccino and picks at what's left of his scone. He stares at the window and sighs at the rain, remembers a kiss when they were wet head to toe and how Sebastian had sang a love song under his breath when they ducked out of the skip. His mind wanders too far and he remembers that it rained the morning of his mother's funeral and the cemetery had been marshy as they lowered her coffin into the ground.  
Sebastian doesn't come.

***  
"Uh, Hello, you must be Mrs.Moran." Jim holds out a shaky hand when a sophisticated woman opens the door.  
"Call me Maggie. You must be Jim?" She takes Jim's hand and pulls him into the foyer when he nods. She gives him a tight motherly hug and when she pulls away her face is distraught.  
"Come with me." She leads Jim into a reading room on the first floor, it's all dark rich wood and portraits of the Moran family line. It is nothing like Jim's home, and he realises coldly this is the first time he's actually been in Sebastian's.  
"He left this for you." She hands Jim a sealed envelope that is pregnant with pages. Tears well up in her eyes.  
"You have to understand he didn't want to go. It was all his father's doing and I'll have his bollocks for it." The tears slip down her cheeks. "No one else knows, but a son can only keep being in love from his mother for long." She rubs Jim's arm and bites at her lip to keep from completely breaking down. She presses him down to the overly tufted settee and leaves the room choking back a sob.  
Jim opens the envelope, which somehow smells like Sebastian's skin, but couldn't replace that sacred vellum.

Dear Jim,  
I am so sorry I wasn't there, that I left you in that café by yourself, that you had to pay for your own coffee when I know you only drink it because I do. I didn't mean to jilt you. And if I could take you to an altar you must know I'd never leave you standing at it alone.  
He won't let me leave the house, says he knows I'd bolt if I got out the front door. He enlisted me without my consent and being a fucking ambassador there's no way for me to argue it. I ship out in the morning. Some dumb bullshite about how a Moran has been in every war since we had a crest. I don't care, you know I'd rather be here with you than in a desert with a gun in my hand.  
Fuck, I just want a goodbye kiss like they get in the movies. I just want to rewrite this script and make it more like a Danny Boyle film where we get to take the money and run.  
Do you remember the time that we went to the brook side and I slipped down the bed and landed on my arse? And I ended up with that stupid heart shaped bruise on my left cheek? I promise I'll come back with less injury than that.  
I'm going to write as often as I can, I'll send them to mum and she'll make sure they get to you. I know she will. I'll only be gone a year and a half, don't go falling in love with some other dumb prick while I'm gone.  
Goddammit I love you, and don't you forget it.  
~Seb  
***  
Jim walks home after dark, limbs languorously hanging at his sides. He walks home and into a beating cries tears his father assumes are from the lashes but couldn't care less about the way he's bleeding.

***  
"Shay...Jim, you alright?"  
"No and quit asking." Jim huffed in the dark.  
He 's about to be twenty, for that matter so is his twin; but, he feels like a child all over losing his definition of love. He feels hollow and angry and he hates that he still has to deliver bread to the manor at the top of the hill. He hasn't had a letter in weeks, basic training, Maggie says. Soon, Maggie says.  
"Seems like you changed is all. I just, I care, ya know?"  
Jim rolls over on his side to face his mirror image across the room and in the quietest voice he can muster he confesses.  
“Risteard, tá mé croí-bhriste.” (Richard, I’m heartbroken.)  
“Séamus, tá brón orm. Cad a hainm ?” (James, I’m sorry. What’s her name?)  
Jim doesn’t have it in him to keep up the pretense anymore, if anyone will understand and keep his secret it’s his closest blood.  
“Sebastian.” He has no strength to keep the tears back. No proud face to put on. He is scared and broken. And if it weren’t for the fact he has a fool’s hope that Sebastian will return to him he would have sunk into the ground days ago.  
“Feicim, go maith…” (I see, well…)  
“Níl mé ag iarraidh a labhairt níos mó. Téigh a chodladh.” (I don’t want to talk anymore. Go to sleep.)

***

Dear Jim,  
Basic was fucking brutal. I’m sorry I couldn’t write and I’m sorry this won’t be very long. We’re heading out tomorrow. I’m told I should be able to write once a week once we get stationed but that the mail will take forever to get to you. If I can I’ll email. No guarantee that I’ll have access, but I’ll try.  
Apparently they say I’ve got talent. First I’ve heard of it, but they say I should be safer than most, not really but more protected because of what they’ll have me doing.  
Wish you could see me now, I am well fit. I’m sending along a picture, but I don’t know if it’ll make it past the security check.  
I miss your lips, miss your hair. I dream about you here. I’ll dream about you wherever I go until I get back to you. I love you, don’t forget me, yeah?  
Seb  
***  
Jim starts carrying a wallet instead of a money clip. The leather is worn since it’s from a second hand, but he could care less. The important thing is why he carries the wallet; it’s so he can carry a little tiny photo of his solider in his pocket no matter where he is. He covets the picture, the only one he has of Sebastian, and if he develops over sentimental feelings about the way his handsome man looks almost brutish in his camel coloured digital camouflage he doesn’t say anything.

Almost six months goes by, and there are as many letters at Sebastian can manage. Because of this Jim seems to take up a new sort of rendezvous - meeting his lover’s mother once a week. Just so they can talk to one another. He was so young when he lost his own, Maggie seems to take up residence in his heart. If he is honest he’d refer to her as his mother-in-law, but that sort of thing is just not accepted around these parts.  
She tells Jim about Sebastian as a child, how she called him Sebby and how he grew to love malai kofta more than shepard’s pie because they were stationed in India for so long when he was a child. Jim learns more about Sebastian through his gushing, worried mother than he did in the year they’d spent together. He doesn’t mind, he sees how the stories she relays are ones of maternal affection and not the type of thing that works as pillow talk, not that they usually had pillows. 

***  
Maggie is late. Maggie is never late. Jim’s bones all sink into his stomach when he remembers the last time he was left unaccompanied in his corner booth. He has nothing but bile in his veins as he approaches the manor on the hill, not even slowing as he nears the door but instead hopping ungainly off his bicycle and sprinting to the entrance before his handlebars hit the gravel.  
The door to the house is open, and not just unlocked, it’s ajar. Jim sees the back of a well groomed brunet head, the crisp line of a black priest cut collar makes the rest of his body seem like a spectre. He’s lost his sense of hearing, or maybe it’s temporary. He’s sure he should be able to hear Maggie scream the way her face is red and her mouth is hanging open like a comma at the end of an unfinished sentence. Nothing registers. And that’s it. The floor disintegrates, the oxygen level drops or skyrockets and either way Jim’s head is swimming. There was a shaking in Jim’s chest, below his throat as though all of his internal organs were going to vibrate until they ruptured. He can’t even cry. 

He does not go home. Maggie makes excuses for him and Augustus allows this ‘stranger’ to stay at their house. There is a battle in her heart, to keep Sebastian’s room exactly as it has been untouched, unmarred in fourteen months, and to piece back together the man her son loved. 

Love wins out and Jim sleeps, for the first and only time in Sebastian’s bed. It is marshmallow soft and smells like stale night sweat and mandarin shampoo which always made Sebastian scented like a mid-July day. Except Jim doesn’t sleep. He is still but he doesn’t rest. By morning the bedclothes no longer smell of a tanned blond boy who loved wild jungle cats; by morning it smells like a spiny black-haired Irish boy who has never seen a lion in person but wishes he could be eaten by one as he shuffles his way back home. 

***  
“Agus díreach nuair a bhfuil an ag marcaíocht raibh tú?” (And just where the fuck have you been?) Is the first thing his father says, a booming voice that crashes like a squall on a rocky shore. He’s drunk, Jim knows this because Fiolan slurs the last two words together.  
“Ag cara teach.” (At a friend’s house.)Jim knows better than to reply in anything but Irish, knows if he does he’ll end up black and blue. “Cá bhfuil Risteard?” (Where is Richard?)  
“I gcás ina mbaineann sé.” (Where he belongs)  
Jim turns to see his brother curled in a corner, knees drawn up, hands over his cowering head. This is Jim’s fault, he did this to his brother as much as his father had. Jim is sick, was sick, some how gets sicker. He can’t have love.  
“Risteard dúradh liom . Dúradh liom go bhfuil mo mhac fionnadh.” (Richard told me. Told me my son is a faggot.) Fiolan spits the last word and the slur hits Jim in the chest.  
“Fuck you! I love him and he’s gone. He’s fucking dead and I’m left with what? You’re sorry arse and nothing else!” Jim is furious, how dare his father throw this in his face. Not now. Not ever.  
Fiolan closes the space between he and Jim in a blink and then Jim is tumbling backward to the floor, pain radiating throughout his face like the burn of an ember against tissue paper. He doesn’t just give in this time. He’s on his feet fighting back before he can think about it. Except he isn’t really fighting his father, he’s fighting the homophobic hatred, the secrets he had to keep, the disassociated heartbreak; he’s fighting for all the love he won’t have in the years to come, he’s fighting the entire army and every enemy on the other side of the line.  
Fiolan is bleeding, a pulpy mess on the kitchen floor by the time Jim is done. His nose is surely broken and the blood streaming from his mouth is a promise he’s swallowed a tooth at some point. He doesn’t need to do it, and he does. When Jim stands up he steps on Fiolan’s extended forearm and he uses all his weight to snap the bone.  
“Nuair a iarrann siad cad a tharla duit . Bí cinnte go insint duit iad do mhac fionnadh rinne sé.” (When they ask what happened to you. Make sure you tell them your faggot son did it.) 

Jim gathers Richie up and leaves his father in a pile on the floor. 

***  
The funeral is gorgeous, nothing less for the son of a statesman. It’s hollow from the inside out, hydrangeas line the procession and a priest is saying prayers over an unfilled mahogany coffin. Jim keeps his distance, Maggie sees but cannot step away. It doesn’t rain on the morning of Sebastian’s burial, and so the ground is sturdy at his grave when the useless box is lowered. 

When everyone is gone, when feigning grave is covered in sand and the sun is setting, Jim finally makes his way. He’s out of tears, he’s out of screams; he’s pretty sure he’s out of every emotion he could name. 

“So, I guess you didn’t lie to me. You didn’t come home with any injuries, now did you? You just didn’t come home.” It’s all he can do to keep his voice from quivering. “Dammit, I love you, and don’t you forget it.” He sets a hand picked bunch of cone flowers next to the expertly arranged rose bouquets and calla lily crosses. No one will notice the pink splayed petals amongst all the grand things people paid for and shipped because they couldn't be bothered to make it to services themselves. No one but Jim will know they came from under the tree where Sebastian first kissed him. 

***  
Jim leaves and takes his brother with him while their father is in traction. They have nothing to their names but, Jim will get everything sorted, he promises. 

***  
Jim hates hiring new help. But if the dolts on his payroll kept getting themselves killed he has to find solutions. Nasty business, all that. At least he can have some fun with it.

***

“Richard Branaugh was the best in...” He begins the phone call, relaxing in his East Finchley condo with a brandy in his hand.  
“Frankenstein” replies a voice that only seems to care because it’s the code word he’s been given to initiate the contact. Funny thing that, no one ever gets to Jim and so he’s just a voice on the other end of the line, like Charlie except he’s not running Angles in London.  
“Langston Road, Loughton, Essex, IG10 3TN. 7:45PM. Hymenoptera are green and gold, so I’m told.” The line goes dead.  
From what Jim’s heard this one has done a bit of dirty work for some sharks, got his name, his sobriquet out there. Anyone who’s anybody in London’s underbelly was made well aware that ‘Tyger’ was looking for blood. Jim isn’t just anybody, he’s everybody and so when he needs a troublesome banker killed he doesn’t hesitate to ring this mysterious new gun for hire.  
The sharpshot would be paid handsomely - it wasn’t an assumption that the job would go smoothly.  
Jim reads all about it once he dismantles a code ladden email that to any idiot at New Scotland Yard would be a message about a donation proposal for the Planetarium. 

One shot, no witnesses, gun dismantled and pieces disposed of throughout the city. 

Jim is more than pleased with the work, and being in need of a more superior right hand man, decides he wants to meet this show-off who goes for the carotid and not the head at a two kilometre distance. 

***

He makes a call in the middle of the early morning hours. 

“In five minutes walk to the nor’eastern corner and get in the Saab.” 

On the corner Jim can see a tall man with a ridiculous hair cut smoking a cigarette down to the filter in two minutes. He’s looking around, constant threat assessment, something Jim admires very much.  
As the sleek black Saab approaches, it doesn’t fully stop, just slows down enough for the stranger to grab the handle and swing in. A short, thin man in a well fitting, obviously expensive suit is driving. He looks like a high end rent boy, so neat and tidy but somehow filthy. He doesn’t make eye contact, just speeds up.  
The scarred blond in the back seat takes out another smoke, perches it in his lips, opens a beat up zippo and ignites the end of the coffin nail.  
There is some expectation that the windows will roll down, but they don’t and instead the car is a hot-box of tobacco vapour.  
No one attempts idle chatter, this is business after all, there’s enough tension a garotter could slide a wire through it.  
Eventually they pull up to a condominium in East Finchley, the driver parks the car, swaps the keys to the mouth breathing member of the staff who had been staring down the talent in the backseat then he drives it to an undisclosed parking location. The first driver let’s the gunman into the house and disappears down the road, making it more likely that he was, in fact, on hire for the hour only. 

This is actually Jim’s favourite part, seeing how long it takes to get someone to crack.  
His home is lavishishly decorated, a dichotomous mix of victorian and futuristic- some how it all fit together so nicely, or rather he thinks it does.  
All two metres of the killer stalks into the house like he owns the place, going directly to the wet bar at the far end of the room and pouring three fingers of the first decanture in reach. 

“I was told I’d be meeting my new boss.” The blond says it as a challenge to the empty room.  
“Oh, were you now?” Comes Jim’s coy and varying voice from the corridor. Jim does changeable so well, he doesn’t see why his accent can’t also.  
“Yeah.” The killer is gallant, slinging back whiskey he couldn’t tell you the price of with his back to the door, he’s showing he’s fearless.  
“Jim Moriarty. Hi.” Jim’s voice was an arpeggio in the dark. 

Jim prides himself on knowing what’s going to come next and how it’s all going to play out. Jim is a fool. A bullet zings past his right temple before he has time to fully step into the room. He hadn’t even see the man draw the weapon, he decides to stay out of perfect view for a moment, considers using his panic button but can’t make his fingers move to his phone to even get the signal out. 

“Who the fuck are you?” The blond turns and Jim’s heart stops. It’s a decade ago, and he’s an eighteen years old in a chippy fawning over the love of his life, his head reels and he questions his sanity. 

“Sebby?” 

 

***

“I don’t see what’s so magnificent about this mile, it’s just a bunch of shops.” Jim grousses as they shove their way through the crowd.  
“Oh c’mon Bon, at least enjoy the people watching.” Seb says as he pulls Jim into Bloomingdale’s by the hand.  
“What have I told you about pet names in public?”  
“Not to use them, but ya know what, Bonny Boy? No one knows us here, just relax and let me buy you something pretty, yeah?”  
“With my money.”  
“You’re the one who insists on paying me for my services.” Seb jests, not that he’s checked his account in years. He’s probably a millionaire, but it’s still all Jim’s as far as he’s concerned. Or rather, it’s all theirs.  
“Yeah well, it’s hard to find someone with your skillset.” Jim says this in complete business tone but follows it up with an obscene gesture, pumping his hand in front of his mouth and his tongue prodding at his cheek. They both laugh and Jim squeezes Sebastian’s hand, leaning his head on the taller man’s arm, not nearly reaching his shoulder.  
After less than an hour and a few thousand dollars dropped Sebastian is carrying an array of every size of brown bag the store offers and a suit in a garment bag slung over his shoulder.  
“Oh,you spoil me.” Jim says patting Seb’s chest.  
The hoard of people that flood Michigan Avenue just reminds Jim of the shoppers in London.Obviously punters are punters, no matter where you go. 

***  
"This wasn't meant to happen." Jim whispers in Sebastian’s ear while they make a lazy waltz across a teak floor. Jim’s chin resting the way it has for years against a strong left shoulder. 

“Odds were against us for a while, I know.” Sebastian sweeps them in a circle just to feel how Jim goes pliant in his arms. They are alone in Jim’s Bern office with a marriage license signed on the desk. 

“I mean really who spends their entire lives with their puppy love, hm? Normal fucking people, not us.” Jim feigns scoffing.

“Puppy love is for the dogs.” 


End file.
